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http://www.archive.org/details/questionofalsaceOObalc 



OF 

ALSACE AND LORRAINE 



'i.Ly0.rl. w- 



:.LLEN, LAN; 



THE QUESTION 

OF 

ALSACE AND LORRAINE 



THOMAS WILLING BALCH 

L. H. D. Trinity College, Hartford 

Member of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston 



ALLEN, LANE AND SCOTT 

Philadelphia 

1918 



A 






Copyright, 1918 

by 

THOMAS WILLING BALCH 



DEC i 3 ii)H^ 



A 

PAUL SABATIER 
DE STRASBOURG ET DES CEVENNES 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

THE present essay is the result of some per- 
sonal observations which it was my good for- 
tune to be able to make in the years 1890, 1891, 
1894, 1896 and 1897, in Alsace and Lorraine on 
both sides of the Franco-German frontier estab- 
lished in 1 87 1 by the treaty of Frankfurt. I have 
also studied the question of Alsace and Lorraine 
and its history off and on ever since. In preparing 
this essay, I have consulted the following works: 
Dr. William Smith: Ancient Atlas, London, 1874. 
Thomas Willing Balch: Some Facts about Alsace 
a?id Lorrame, Bulletin of the Geographical Club of 
Philadelphia, 1 895 . 

Dr. Julius Peterson: Das Deutschtuni in Elsass- 
Lothringen, Munich, 1902. 

Ernest Lavisse: Histoire de France — volume five; 
La liitte contre la maison d'Autriche. La Fra?ice 
sous Henri II. {151^-1550), by Henri Lemonnier, 
Paris, 1904; volume seven; Louis XIV. La Fronde. 
Le Roi. Colbert (i 643-1 685), by E. Lavisse, Paris, 
1906. 

Rodolphe Reuss: La France et V Alsace a travers 
r Histoire, Paris, 4th August, 19 15. 



Leon Dominian: The Frontiers of Language and 
Nationality in Europe, New York, 191 7. 

P. Vidal de la Blache: La France de VEst {Lor- 
raine-Alsace), Paris, 1 91 7. 

Henri Welschinger: Frederic de Dietrich, maire de 
Strasbourg (1^48-1^^^), Revue des Deux-Mondes, 
Paris, 15th September, 19 18. 

I have made free use of my paper mentioned 
above, which I read before the Geographical Society 
of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895. 

T. W. B. 

Philadelphia, November i8th, 191 8. 



THE QUESTION OF 
ALSACE AND LORRAINE 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

I. 

The question of Alsace and Lorraine was born 
on May loth, 1871, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, by 
the signing in that city of the treaty of peace which 
ended the Franco-Prussian war, and ctit off from 
France and handed over to the German Empire 
most of Alsace and part of Lorraine. From that 
day that question was an active reality for France 
and the annexed lands. And though the newly 
constituted German Empire repeatedly denied 
through various channels that such a question 
existed, the question of Alsace and Lorraine like- 
wise became from that same tenth of May a most 
active and ever present reality for Germany. Very 
soon it became also an actuality, though not recog- 
nized openly, for the other nations of Europe. 

Both France and Germany silently looked about 
them at all times for alliances to prepare for the 
day when — as the deputies of Lorraine and Alsace 
had solemnly and prophetically declared on Feb- 
ruary the 17th, 1 87 1, in the National Assembly of 



2 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

France at Bordeaux— the storm of war must inevi- 
tably be let loose again if any part of either Alsace 
or Lorraine were taken against the wishes of their 
inhabitants from France and annexed to Germany. 
The main cause of the crushing armaments that 
came to weigh year by year upon all Europe more 
and more oppressingly, it is not too much to say, 
was the annexation almost half a century ago of 
these lands against the V\^ill of their inhabitants. 
Certainly that annexation was one of the chief 
factors that brought upon practically the whole 
world the Great War which has injured and still 
threatens our present period of civilization. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 



II. 

My interest in Alsace and Lorraine was awak- 
ened at an early age. When a boy I heard my 
elders often speak of the Franco-Prussian War and 
the Paris Commune, and the consequences that 
flowed from those events. My interest in the lost 
provinces of France grew until I hoped to visit 
them some day and so learn on the spot some- 
thing more about those lands and their peoples. 
At length in October, 1890, the same year I 
graduated at Harvard College, it was my good 
fortune to visit as a tourist both Alsace and Lor- 
raine. Before I entered those lands, I had formed 
certain rather definite and clear cut opinions about 
them. I thought that they were two provinces that 
were inhabited by peoples of the German race and 
tongue whom France in past centuries had through 
violence and treachery seized from the Germanic 
Empire. I had heard that the people of those two 
provinces, though speaking German themselves, had 
opposed in 1871 their annexation to Germany. I 
had learned also that the Germans in annexing 
Alsace and Lorraine to the newly formed German 
Empire, claimed that they were merely recovering 



4 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

their long lost German brothers and sisters — who 
had been violently torn from their Fatherland. 
And I had found that the German theory was well 
expressed in one of the German war songs, The 
German Fatherland. The essential words of that 
song, which were written in 1813 by Ernest Moritz 
Arndt, when the Germans were driving Napoleon 
out of Germany, and were afterwards set to music 
in 1825 by Gustav Reichardt, were: 

"Was ist das Deutschen Vaterland? 
So nenne endlich mir das land! 
So weit die Deutsche Zunge klingt! 
Und Gott in, Himmel Lieder singt! 
Dass soil es sein, dass soil es sein. 
Das ganze Deutschland soil es sein." 

"What is the German Fatherland? 
So name to me at last that land! 
So far as the German tongue rings 
And hymns to God in heaven sings! 
That shall it be! 
The whole of Germany shall it be!" 

Entering Alsace from Bale in Switzerland, I was 
not surprised at first at what I heard and saw. 
At the stations and in the railroad car I heard 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 5 

German; everywhere I saw German names and 
German signs. Passing through Mulhouse, I caught 
sight of the Alsacian name of KoechHn so well 
known in France. At Mulhouse a number of 
people got into the car, and three or four of them, 
a German soldier among the number, exchanged 
remarks in German about the weather, the state 
of the crops, and other such every day topics. 

However, after a time the conversation lapsed. 
Then one of the men who had gotten in at 
Mulhouse, who had taken part in the conversa- 
tion in German, and who sat directly opposite 
the soldier, to whom he had addressed some of 
his remarks, pulled out of his pocket a copy 
of Le Petit Journal of Paris, one of the most 
widely read newspapers in France. Here, then, 
was a man to all appearances a German, who 
spoke to his fellow-passengers in German, read- 
ing a newspaper published on the other side of 
the Vosges Mountains. Upon arriving at Col- 
mar, all these travellers who had entered the car 
at Mulhouse got out and a new set took their 
place. The newcomers were four — a father, a 
mother, a girl of about sixteen and a small child 
of three or four. They appeared, like all the 
others, to be Germans. The three older mem- 



6 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

bers spoke to one another in German, but when- 
ever they addressed a word to the Httle child, 
they always spoke in French. It seemed that as 
they knew two languages, they wished, like sen- 
sible people, to teach them both to their children. 
But when the conductor put in his head at the 
window and asked in German for their tickets, 
they at once spoke to him in French, and made 
him answer them in the same language. 

At the railroad station in Strasbourg, all the 
employes were busy talking German. There was 
a poor woman at a news-stand reading to her small 
boy out of a book. A German officer asked her 
in German for a copy of the Kolnischer Zeitung. 
She answered him in the same language, and sold 
him the paper. She had, however, also on her 
table a large pile of Le Petit Journal of Paris. But 
what was more interesting and eloquent of her 
nationalistic thoughts and feelings, was that as she 
opened her book she began to read to her young 
son in French. That was a school house conducted 
evidently to teach French to the rising genera- 
tion, a school house which all the edicts of the 
German Empire had not been able to put out of 
business. 

The cab driver, too, who drove me to the Paris- 




OLD HOUSE, STRASBOURG 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 7 

erhof or Hotel de Paris, took pains to speak in 
French rather than German, so as to make it quite 
clear on which side were his sympathies. At the 
hotel the employes were all Germans by birth, 
immigrants from beyond the Rhine. They spoke 
German and were most anxious to emphasize their 
nationality. 

Walking about the town the next day, I saw 
on every side signs with German names, such as 
Bethmann, Hartmann, Holzmann and Schneider. 
But in countless ways it was easy to see that at 
heart the Strasbourgers were French. For in- 
stance, in the window of a grocery store on the 
Broglieplatz (Place de Broglie) named after a 
marshal of France, although all display of the 
French flag was rigorously forbidden in the Reichs- 
land, the store-keeper, whose name was thoroughly 
German, had circumvented the ban on the tri- 
color by placing in a conspicuous place some huge 
white candles, between two packages of red ones, 
wrapped at the bottom in blue paper. It was 
indeed a dull man who did not see at once the 
blue, white and red of the flag of France. 

Not only the people themselves by their racial 
features, names and various other intangible things 
were stamped all over as belonging to the German 



8 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

race, but also the visible result of their labors in 
the past as expressed in their buildings, showed 
that they belonged to the Teutonic branch of the 
German family. For example, the old or medi- 
aeval houses of Strasbourg are marked all over as 
belonging to the style of construction that is found 
in the lands of Germanic origin; not merely all 
through the present German Empire, but also in 
the German speaking lands of the Hapsburg pos- 
sessions, as well as in Belgian Flanders and the 
Dutch provinces. Likewise the mediaeval walls and 
towers that remain in Strasbourg are essentially 
of the kind that you find in German and not in 
French speaking lands. The Germanic charac- 
teristic of the people was shown in addition in the 
most notable building of Strasbourg, its famous 
minster. 

The cathedral of Strasbourg, which rises in the 
middle of the old city, shows strong marks of 
Germanic features in its construction. While built 
in part in the German Romanesque style, it has 
many Gothic features in its makeup. But it is 
not the Gothic of the He de France, on the contrary 
in the main it belongs to the group of churches 
which are found upon the upper German Rhine, as 
at Speyer and Worms. "Thus this great edifice, 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. V 

distinctly a German building," the present writer 
has elsewhere written/ "in its lines and decorations, 
dating from 1179 to 1439, is additional evidence to 
prove that the Alsacians are of German origin. 
From the top of the cathedral tower you have a 
far-reaching view. All along the west you see 
running north and south the blue slopes of the 
Vosges Mountains, which divide the country off 
from France; and parallel to them, but a little to 
the east of Strasbourg, that great artery of com- 
merce, the River Rhine, which commercially links 
Alsace with Germany. Between the mountains 
and the river lies the plain of Alsace. Beyond 
the Rhine far to the east, lies the Black Forest. 
Looking out from the steeple over the city, the 
writer (1890) was struck with its resemblance to 
Niimberg, as the city of Albrecht Diirer appears 
from the tower of the castle where the ancestors 
of the Hohenzollerns used to hold their sway. 
The color of the roofs, the style of construction of 
the houses of old Strasbourg, were almost identical 
with those of the city of the Meistersingers. My 
guide, as he pointed out to me the objects of inter- 
est, spoke in German, and, like every one I had 

^ So7ne Facts about Alsace and Lorraine, a paper read before the 
Geographical Club of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895. 



10 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

seen, he looked German. By and by, when I 
could not quite understand something he was 
explaining, he said: "Perhaps you can under- 
stand French better?" "Yes," I answered. That 
was the end of German. He at once rattled away 
in French. I asked him whether he was a German 
or a Frenchman. "I am an Alsacian," he 
answered. But as he was describing the bombard- 
ment of Strasbourg and pointing out where the 
German batteries stood, and telling how bravely 
the French commander General Uhrich resisted, 
just after saying the Germans were many tens of 
thousand strong, he unconsciously disclosed his 
national feelings by the expression, "But we, militia, 
police and all were but seventeen thousand." He 
then told me how only German was taught in the 
schools, and how many of the well-to-do French 
had left for France." 

Among the monuments of Strasbourg, perhaps the 
one most dear to the Alsacians is that of General 
Kleber on the Kleberplatz or Place Kleber. A 
native of Strasbourg and a general of the First 
French Republic, the name of General Kleber who 
was killed in Egypt, where he succeeded to the 
command of the French army after the return of 
General Bonaparte to France, is essentially a 




GENERAL KLEBER, STRASBOURG 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 11 

German name. It means literally "paster," for 
zii kleben means to paste, as for example to paste 
paper on a wall. 

Another of the best generals of the First Republic 
who bore a German name and whom France like- 
wise owed to Strasbourg, was Francois Christophe 
de Kellermann, who was born at Strasbourg in 1735. 
In command of the French army, in September, 
1792, Kellermann, by the victory of Valmy which 
he won in the passes of the Argonne over the 
enemies of France who had gained possession of the 
two French fortresses of Longwy and Verdun, 
effectually put a stop to the invasion of France. 
For this notable service to France he was made a 
marshal and subsequently he was created by 
Napoleon Duke of Valmy. Kellerman in his day 
and generation struck as heavy and effective a 
blow at the Germans advancing into France, as 
Foch struck on the Germans advancing into France 
in the World War. 

Another of the famous Strasbourg monuments is 
that of the inventor of printing from movable 
type, Gutenberg. He lived in Strasbourg for a 
time and it was there he began the invention of 
printing. He holds in his hand an open bible 
upon which is written in French "et la lumiere fut," 



12 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

"and there was light." The statue is by David 
d' Angers and was unveiled in 1842. 

Still another of the notable historic monuments 
of Strasbourg is the tomb of Marshal Saxe. It is 
in the Evangelical Church of Saint Thomas and is 
considered the chef d'oeiivre of the French sculptor, 
Jean Baptiste Pigalle. Maurice of Saxe, a natural 
son of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony, 
also chosen King of Poland, and the beautiful 
Countess Aurora von Konigsmark, was born at 
Goslar, October 28th, 1696. Created a marshal 
of France and naturalized a Frenchman, he won 
for France the battles of Fontenoy, 1745, Rocroi, 
1746, and Lawfeldt or Val, 1747. In 1748 he 
captured Maestricht. He is here represented as 
descending into the tomb which Death opens for 
him. The figure of a woman representing the 
spirit of France in vain tries to stop him, and 
Hercules mournfully watches the marshal. The 
allegorical figures, such as the Austrian eagle, the 
Dutch lion and the English leopard, with their 
flags broken under them, represent the countries 
whose armies Maurice of Saxe had beaten in the 
wars in Flanders. There is nothing in the church 
that can rival it, and perhaps in part for that 
reason, it has impressed many people as being finer 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 13 

than anything in Westminster Abbey which is 
filled to overflowing. 

The most important of the open spaces in the old 
city of Strasbom'g, the Broglieplatz or Place de 
Broglie, is named after a marshal of France of a 
noble French family originally from Italy, which 
has given many notable men to France. Another 
of its members, the Prince Claude Victor de Broglie 
came to America in 1782, and among other places 
visited Philadelphia and Boston. 

After the Franco-Prussian war was over, the 
Gennans built about Strasbourg strong outlying 
forts far out from the city, some of them in the 
Grand Duchy of Baden on the German side of the 
Rhine. They also did many things to add to 
the importance and commercial and intellectual 
advancement of Strasbourg to reconcile the inhabi- 
tants of the ancient freier Reichstadt to their new 
allegiance. Thus for instance, they built fine new 
bridges over the River 111, laid out in the unbuilt 
quarters about the tov/n handsome streets, built 
an imperial palace and rehabilitated on an import- 
ant scale the ancient University. Yet in 1890 
there were no visible signs to show that the Alsa- 
cians of Strasbourg were in the least reconciled to 
their forced annexation nineteen years before to 



14 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

the German Empire. Probably one reason for 
this attachment by a German people, who still 
spoke German as their daily household tongue, to 
France by whom they had been forcibly annexed in 
the seventeenth century, was the great commercial 
freedom with which Alsace as well as every other 
province of France was blessed when the French 
Revolution broke down the barriers to commerce 
between province and province that had come 
down from feudal times. In that way the people 
of Alsace were free to trade with the people of all 
the rest of France to the remotest parts unhamp- 
ered with vexatious and prohibitive internal customs 
duties. Also with the French Revolution there came 
to the Alsacians the boon of individual freedom in 
a degree not even dreamt of before. As a unit the 
Alsacians rallied to the Republic, and after the 
Napoleonic epic they did their part for France. 

The strong feeling of attachment of the Alsacians 
for France is shown in a song composed since the 
Franco-Prussian War in pure Alsacian German. 
It is eloquent of the feelings of the native born 
Alsacians under the rule of the Hohenzollerns : 

"Edles Frankreich, deine Grenzen, 
Dich, sell' ich von fern schon stehn. 
Wann wird sich mein Schicksal andern, 
Dass ich Frankreich wieder seh!" 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 15 

''Noble France, thy frontier 
Which I see from far away, 
When will my lot change, 
That I may see France again." 

Or again, in these French lines b3'' Erckmann- 
Chatrian, likewise written since the war of 1870-71, 
the absolute preference of the Alsacians for France 
is also clearly expressed: 

"Dis-m_oi quel est ton pays: 
Est-ce la France ou TAllemagne? 
C'est un pays de plaine et de montagne. 
Que les vieux Gaulois ont conquis 
Deux mille ans avant Charlemagne, 
Et que I'etranger nous a pris! 
C'est la vieille terre frangaise 
De Kleber, de la Marseillaise!'' 

"Tell me which is your country: 
Is it France or Germany? 
It is a land of plains and mountains, 
Which the ancient Gauls conquered 
Two thousand years before Charlemagne, 
And that the stranger took from us! 
It is the ancient French land 
Of Kleber, of the Marseillaise!" 



16 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

In 1890 there was no apparent sign to show 
that the Alsacians were in the least reconciled to 
their annexation to Gennany. To see a people 
speaking among themselves the language of their 
fathers and yet bitterly opposing by all the means 
in their power the attempt to join them once more 
with that nation of whom geographically and 
ethnologically they naturally formed a part, seemed 
very strange. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 17 



III. 

Leaving Strasbourg for Metz, I travelled by 
railroad across the Vosges Mountains by the Col 
de Saverne (Zabern) into Lorraine. Outside of the 
lands of the snow mountains I have seldom taken 
a more beautiful railroad ride. The mountains 
were not high, but the autumn coloring of the 
forests was charming and the works of man were 
in keeping with the beauties of nature. Now and 
then there were the ruins of a feudal castle on 
some commanding hilltop. Part of the time, the 
railroad passed close to a canal that connected 
the Rhine with the Marne. In that land, where 
you could almost smell in the air the preparations 
for war, man was not unmindful of the economic 
laws of nature that govern the rainfall and the 
depths of the streams. Not only were the forest 
cut and replanted according to the most scientific 
knowledge, but also along the roadsides and the 
banks of the canal trees were growing, thereby 
affording shelter to both man and beast against the 
summer sun. 

Soon after crossing the Col de Saverne the train 
passed by the station at which a branch road runs 



18 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

to Phalsbourg (Pf^lzburg), the town made so 
famous by Erckmann-Chatrian's stories of the 
French Revolution and the Napoleonic epic. Le 
Consent de i8ij, I' Invasion, Waterloo, VHistoire 
d'un Paysan, I' Ami Fritz, etc., are stories that 
every boy or girl who have known French in their 
youth, have read. Emile Erckmann was bom in 
1822 at Phalsbourg, only a few kilometers within 
the boundaries of Lorraine, while Alexandre Cha- 
trian was born in 1826 at Abreschwiller in Lower 
Alsace. That union of two authors, one with a 
German and the other with a French name, was a 
hint of the difference between the two provinces. 
For as the train moved out from the Vosges Moun- 
tains towards Sarrebourg and the plain of Lorraine, 
there was a complete change in the appearance of 
the people. Whereas in Alsace the people seemed 
to all appearances to be Germans, in the plain of 
Lorraine they were unquestionably French in type, 
and in the villages through which the train passed, 
the German names had given place to French ones. 
This difference of race in the two provinces is 
well exemplified in the costumes of the women of 
the two lands. The dominant color values of the 
Alsacian costume run into the darker hues, and it 
is dominated with the large black bow, so well 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 19 

known the world over. It all harmonizes with the 
peasant costume of other parts of Germany. The 
costume worn by the peasant women of Lorraine is 
altogether different in its conception and is easily 
recognized as belonging to the group of French 
peasant costumes, and not to those of Germany. 
The work upon the costume of Lorraine calls for a 
lighter hand in its execution than that of Alsace, 
which is in keeping with the French character. 
The cap or head-dress of the costume of Lorraine 
is white, and not black as that of Alsace. 

Two places in Lorraine have an especial historic 
interest for us Americans, which is not generally 
appreciated. 

It was at Saint-Die in eastern Lorraine at the 
foot of the western slopes of the Vosges Mountains 
that America was christened. In 1507 the famous 
cartographer, Martin Waldseemiiller, long since in 
the employ of Duke Rene Deux of Lorraine, pub- 
lished at Saint-Die a little introduction to cos- 
mography. To this work he added a Latin version 
of the four letters of Americus Vespuccius, which 
were translated from a French version. Waldsee- 
miiller, however, made a curious mistake. He 
exaggerated a statement of Amerigo in his letter 
to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de Medici. Amerigo 



20 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

said in regard to the discovery of probably South 
Georgia, in 52 degrees south latitude, that he had 
"measured the fourth part of the globe." Amerigo 
also said that the lands which they — that is 
the expedition of which he was a member — 
had recently visited and discovered were really a 
new world. But Waldseemiiller assumed that 
Amerigo meant that he had discovered a fourth 
continent. And so Waldseemiiller in his treatise 
suggested that to the new world might appropri- 
ately be given the name of the Portuguese navi- 
gator in its feminine form, to correspond with the 
names of Etiropa, Asia and Africa. Accordingly 
WaldsemuUer, upon his large map of the new 
world that accompanied his little treatise, placed 
the name America. And thus this continent of 
ours which first surely was discovered from Europe 
by our Norse ancestors, then probably secondly by 
the Portuguese at least forty years and more before 
Colimibus sighted land in this half of the world, 
has ever since borne the name of America, and 
its inhabitants that of Americans. 

It was at Metz that in 1777 the Marquis de la 
Fayette, then a young officer of nineteen serving 
in the garrison of the town, first heard of the revolt 
of the American colonies against their motherland; 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 21 

and then and there, in his chivalrous young soul, 
decided that he would brave the perils of an Atlan- 
tic crossing to offer his sword to our fathers in 
their struggle for political independence from Great 
Britain. 

At the railroad station at Metz in 1890 the 
employes were German. But as soon as you 
crossed the old fortifications built by Vauban 
(1633-1707), a marshal of France, and de Cormon- 
taigne (c. 1 695-1 752) the great military engineers 
of the wars of Louis Quatorze and the Duke of 
Marlborough, and Louis Quinze and Marshal Saxe, 
you heard French on all sides, saw French men 
and women, and saw French names, such as 
Antoine, Boitier, Merlin and Picard. The houses, 
too, looked very different, both in their lines and 
coloring, from those of Strasbourg. Also unlike 
Strasbourg, the names of the streets were posted 
up in both German and French. For instance, you 
read " Konigsplatz " and immediately under it you 
saw "Place Royale." So, too, with all official 
announcements. On the right hand you read the 
word "Notiz" with the text underneath in the 
old Gothic characters typical of German speaking 
lands, while alongside there was an "Avis," with 
the text below in French in the Latin lettering. 



22 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

It was hardly worth while to ask the reason for 
this lavish use of French; it was easy to see that 
while a German race inhabited Strasbourg, a French 
people lived in Metz. At the hotels, too — the 
Grand Hotel and the Grand Hotel de Metz — you 
noticed a great difference from the Pariserhof of 
Strasbourg. The proprietors at Metz were Latins, 
not Teutons, and with the exception of the waiters 
in the dining room, the employes were French. 

The cathedral of Metz is very different in its 
lines and conception from the cathedral of Stras- 
bourg. While this church is not so fine as the 
churches in the He de France, as the cathedrals of 
Amiens, Reims, Chartres, and Paris, and also the 
Sainte Chapelle at Paris, to cite only the very best 
examples of Ogival art, nevertheless the cathedral 
of Metz is distinctly French in construction. And 
it is infinitely finer than the more widely known 
German cathedral of Cologne. It was begun in the 
thirteenth century under the influence of the Reims 
school. The work of building progressed at inter- 
vals, notably in 12 14, 1383, 1478 and 1497. The 
church was finally inaugurated in 1546. The work 
belongs entirely to the Gothic or Ogival style of 
architecture. You notice the windows are not 
merely holes made in the walls. On the contrary, 




C^«*5?S*b*fe» 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 23 

according to the principles of the French architects, 
the walls are turned at right angles to the church. 
And flying buttresses are much relied on to uphold 
the upper portions of the structure, though not 
to the same extent that they are used in some of 
the best examples of Gothic work in the He de 
France. In that way as much light as possible is 
let into the building. In that respect this church 
is vastly different in conception from the cathedral 
of Strasbourg, which, though flying buttresses are 
used there in limited numbers, is planned in part 
on the principle of the Romanesque churches. In 
the Romanesque buildings the windows are holes 
made in the walls of the church. Then look at 
the fleche of Metz. You never saw such a construc- 
tion as that outside of the radius of the French 
architects. That in itself shows that a Frenchman 
planned this church and that workmen of the 
French race built it. 

When I was in Metz in 1890, I climbed to the 
top of the fleche. Three hundred and eighty-seven 
feet high, it affords a fine view over the city and 
le pays Mess in. On the way up the narrow wind- 
ing stairs, I fortunately met no one. The man I 
found at the top was marked all over as a French- 
man. When I spoke to him in French he replied 



24 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

readily in French and pointed out to me the points 
of interest in the fertile pays Mess in. On the 
hills around the city were the strong forts, the 
most important being that on the Mont Saint 
Quentin, towards the west. Then looking out to a 
greater distance from the city, he pointed out the 
three battlefields of August, 1870, which resulted in 
the blocking up of Marshal Bazaine's army in Metz. 
To the east was the battlefield of August 14th. 
Then looking west he pointed out Mars-la-Tour, 
on the French side of the frontier, and the chaussee 
de Gravelotte, on the German side of the boundary. 
At those two places the most important parts of 
two of the great battles near Metz were fought on 
August 1 6th and i8th respectively. It was at 
Gravelotte that the Prussian guard was badly cut 
up by the French, losing more than three thousand 
men. Then, towards the northeast, he showed me 
Saint Privat, where part of the third of the great 
battles around Metz was fought on August 18th. 
While at Saint Privat, Marshal Bazaine held his 
ground, nevertheless the Germans were the real vic- 
tors, for they prevented him from drawing off the 
bulk of his army, the flower of the regular army of 
France, towards Verdun, to the westward. From 
that time the doom of that army of 170,000 men 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 25 

was sealed, as it was soon besieged by the Germans 
and finally in November forced to surrender. 
What a difference in the story of Metz in 1870 and 
that of Verdun in 191 6 and 191 7! Then, towards 
the south, I saw Pont-a-Mousson, on the Moselle 
in France, in the direction of the ancient capital of 
Lorraine, Nancy. When I suggested to my guide 
that he was in truth a Frenchman, for we had not 
spoken a word of any other language, he main- 
tained stoutly, ''Non, je suis Alsacian-Lorrain." 
(No, I am an Alsacian- Lorraine.) Which was a 
diplomatic way to say that he was not a German 
but he would like to be French. When I told 
him that I was an American, he said: "Ah, yes, 
we are idiots in this part of the world; we fight 
while you Americans get our money." 

As I looked out on the pays Messin, and saw in 
the distance the chaussee of Gravelotte, where the 
Germans had paid a heavy price to hold the French 
in check, I remembered the famous telegram that 
Punch said King Wilham of Prussia sent after that 
fight to Queen Augusta: 

"By the will of Heaven, my dear Augusta, 

We've had another awful buster; 

Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below; 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow." 



26 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

When I visited Metz again in June, 1896, on my 
way from France to Tyrol, a fair managed by 
Germans was in full swing in the town. And it was 
noticeable how sharply the line of social contact 
between the two races was drawn. For while 
there were plenty of young soldiers off dut}^ who 
were riding in the merry-go-rounds, or shooting 
at the various marks in the shooting galleries and 
otherwise enjoying themselves with the numerous 
cheap attractions that were provided, and over 
which a few pretty German girls helped to pre- 
side, the French girls, dressed in sombre black, 
flocked severely by themselves, unattended by any 
young man and carefully avoiding participating 
in the attractive features offered by the German 
fair. Doubtless these daughters of France — vierges 
d' Alsace they have been called — one and all would 
instantly, quietly but effectually have resented the 
least friendly advances of the soldiers of the Kaiser. 
The attachment of these young women for France 
was silently but none the less eloquently proclaimed 
so that he who ran could see that their hearts beat 
loyally for France. 

From the top of the fleche of the cathedral of 
Metz you can readily see how the town developed. 
It is built on the Moselle where there are some 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 27 

islands in that stream. Those islands in the be- 
ginning were an admirable place to settle on as 
the arms of the river that encircled them 
formed natural boulevards against attack. At 
the same time, owing to the islands in the mid- 
dle, it was easier to cross the river at that point 
than where its flow was gathered in one unbroken 
current. 

After the Roman conquest of all the Gauls there 
was where Metz now is a town which the Romans 
called Divodurum. The peoples of the surrounding 
country the Romans called Mediomatricii, from 
which the modern name of the town of Metz is 
almost certainly derived. After the town of Metz 
had overflowed to the right bank of the Moselle, 
that quarter became gradually the most important 
portion of the city. Metz became the important 
commercial center for le pays Messin about it. 
Walls were built around it. Of the mediaeval 
walls la Porte d'Allemagne, built in 1445, still 
stands. It is built in the same style of architec- 
ture that you may still see, fortunately, in the 
feudal castle of Pierrefonds, and which until the 
spring of 191 7 could be seen in the ruins of the 
greatest feudal stronghold that was ever built, 
Coucy-le-Chateau. That gate helped to withstand 



28 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

the unsuccessful siege of Metz by the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth in 1552. 

In Metz there are statues, some on foot, others 
on horseback, erected in memory of a number of 
famous men who are linked more or less closely 
with the history of the town. 

On the Place d'Armes, there is a statue of 
Marshal Fabert, one of the children of Metz, where 
he was bom in 1599. He served in the wars of 
Louis Treize and Louis Quatorze, and died in 
1662. Surely it is not necessary to insist on the 
fact that his name is not Germian. 

Besides Fabert, Metz counts among her children 
another well known French soldier. It was at 
Metz that was born Francois Etienne de Keller- 
mann, second Duke of Valmy. A worthy son of 
his more famous sire who won the battle of Valmy 
over the Prussians, the son was one of the best 
cavalry leaders of Napoleon. By his brilliant cav- 
alry charge at Marengo, General Kellermann helped 
very much to regain the battle which had been 
all but lost to the Austrians. He also distin- 
guished himself at Austerlitz and other battle 
fields. Though the name of Kellermann is German, 
at Metz were bom also Adam Philippe Comte de 
Custine, who commanded in America under 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 29 

Rochambeau the infantry regiment of Saintonge, 
General Lasalle, the Hellenic scholar Foes, the 
composer of operas Ambroise Thomas, the engraver 
Sebastien LeClerc, and the historical painter Jean 
Leprince. The names of all these other Messins, 
like that of Fabert, are French, not German. And 
the fact that one of the distinguished officers of 
Napoleon, the younger Kellermann, bore a German 
name does not prove that his native town of Metz 
was a German city in race and origin in his day, 
any more than the fact that the German name 
of the present generalissimo of the American and 
the Allied armies, Foch — who delivered the coup de 
grace to the Germans in the battle of the Marne 
in September, 19 14, and also won the battle 
of North Eastern France in 191 8 — proves that 
the town of Tarbes at the foot of the northern 
slopes of the Pyrenees, where Foch was born, is 
to-day the centre of a land German in race and 
origin. ' 

Another Frenchman, whose name is inseparably 
connected with the town of Metz, is that of Mon- 
seigneur Dupont des Loges. Catholic Bishop of 
Metz when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, 
he continued to fill that important place until his 
death toward the close of the nineteenth century. 



30 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

With infinite tact and farsight ed common sense, 
after Metz had been annexed along with a third 
of the ancient province of Lorraine to Germany, 
Dupont des Loges, whom no flattery nor intimida- 
tion of any kind could influence, was a leader and 
a tower of strength to his people in the enforced 
political bondage which they had to endure. And 
when in 1874 the people of the annexed lands 
were given their first opportunity to send repre- 
sentatives to the Imperial Reichstag, Monseigneur 
Dupont des Loges was sent to Berlin as the 
practically unanimous choice of Metz and the 
surrounding district to join with the other fourteen 
deputies chosen by the annexed provinces, includ- 
ing the Alsacian Protestant Mayor of Strasbourg, 
M. Lauth, to declare in the hall of the German 
Imperial Parliament and so to the German people 
and all the rest of the world besides, that three 
years after the close of the War of 1870-71, the 
people of the annexed provinces were still as firmly 
opposed to the new German nationality which 
victorious Germany had forced upon them against 
their will as they had been in the hour of defeat. 
In the history of Metz the name of Dupont des 
Loges is assured of a high and honored place. 
On the Esplanade the French erected a statue 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 31 

of Marshal Ney, "the bravest of the brave," the 
most famous of Napoleon's marshals. He was 
born in 1769 at Sarrelouis, a town in the portion of 
northern Lorraine which was annexed to Prussia by 
the treaty of peace of 181 5. His statue is by Petre. 

Soon after the Franco-Prussian war was over 
the Germans set on the Esplanade an equestrian 
statue of Emperor William the First. And at 
another spot in the same park they likewise erected 
a statue on foot of Prince Frederick Charles, the 
Red Prince, who took an active part as a com- 
mander in the operations which in August, 1870, 
bottled up Metz, Marshal Bazaine and one hundred 
and seventy thousand of the French regular army. 

The environs of Metz are interesting. It is sur- 
rounded by a number of high hills on which there 
are strong forts. You were allowed in 1890 and 
1896 to drive about in parts of this enclosure, but 
if you should happen to go too near the forts with- 
out a permission card, you would probably have 
spent the next night in a prison, and what would 
have then happened it is difficult to know. Indeed, 
at table d'hote, I heard the German commercial 
travellers say that, without a permission card, 
they would not dare walk in the country about 
Metz, even at a great distance from any of the 



32 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

forts. One of the places that you are allowed to 
see is the house where Marshal Bazaine had his 
headquarters during the siege of Metz. It is a 
country house a mile or two outside the town, 
prettily situated among some trees at the foot of 
one of the high, fort-crowned hills. Near Bazaine's 
headquarters, I saw a sergeant teaching some raw 
recruits to fire from behind trees, and the way 
they did their work was truly wonderful. The 
sergeant went from one man to another, showing 
each one the proper position for loading and firing. 
But no sooner did he move on to the next man 
than the recruit he had just left would get out of 
position and assume some grotesque attitude. 

In the latter part of 1894, I wrote concerning 
the nationality of the name of Metz as follows: 

"There is only one thing to show that the south- 
western half of the part of Lorraine that the Ger- 
mans annexed in 1871 is historically a German 
land; it is the name of its chief town — Metz. That 
is a German name; but as it is surrounded on all 
sides by villages with French names, and the dis- 
trict around it is known to the inhabitants as le 
pays Messin, and every other thing about the 
town, except the garrison and the Germans who 
have settled there since the war (of 1870-71), 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 33 

are French, it would seem to be a Teutonic name 
that has straggled across into the land of the 
Latins, just as you find along all frontier lines a 
mingling of names." ^ 

When the author wrote the above quoted para- 
graph, almost a quarter of a century ago, he had 
found only a relatively small amount of evidence 
as to the national origin of the name of the city 
of Metz in northern Lorraine. In the years that 
have passed since then, he has been able to collect 
much additional evidence that throws light on the 
origin of the name of that town. 

The name of the city of Metz in Lorraine on 
the River Moselle, which the French have called 
Metz-la-Pucelle, since until 1870 it was not cap- 
tured by a foreign army, is probably a contraction 
from the name of the earliest known historic inhab- 
itants of that region, the Mediomatricii. For many 
of the modern names of Europe, whether those of 
nations, provinces, cities or rivers, are derived from 
the ancient Latin names that obtained in the days 
of the Roman Empire. Thus Great Britain comes 
from Brittania, Belgium from Belgia, Gaul from 

^ See So7ne Fads about Alsace and Lorraine, a paper read before the 
Geographical Club of Philadelphia, January 2nd, 1895; Bulletin of 
the Geographical Club of Philadelphia, 1895, page 133. 



34 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Gallia, Germany from Germania, Paris from the 
Parisii, Auvergne from the Arverni, Suabia from 
the Suevi, the River Moselle from the Mosella, 
Cologne or Koln from Colonia Agrippina, and so 
on. So what is more likely and reasonable than 
that the name of Metz-la-Pucelle is derived from 
the Roman name of the Mediomatricii. 

Looking further afield, both in French and 
German history, and in the lands of French and 
German speech, it becomes evident that Metz as a 
name is found in use in both the French and the 
German languages. Thus in French there are 
such proper names as Beaumetz and Demetz, and 
in German such names as Metz and Steinmetz. 
Thus for instance, the French General, Pierre 
Claude Barbier du Metz, was born at Rosnay in 
Champagne in 1638 and died in 1690. Likewise, 
in the Great War, one of the French officers was 
Lieutenant-Colonel George Demetz of the "7^ 
regiment de marche de tirailleurs."^ On the other 
hand, the German engraver, Conrad Martin Metz, 
was born at Bonn in 1755 and died in 1827, and 
one of the German generals in the Franco-Prussian 
war of 1870-71 was named von Steinmetz. Also 
Metz as a geographical name, either merely as 

^ L'Afrique Franqaise, January and February, Paris, 1916, page 36. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 35 

Metz or in conjunction with some other syllable, 
is found in a number of widely scattered places 
within the sphere of both languages. In France, 
for instance, southwest of Cambrai there is Metz- 
en- Couture. And again, northwest of Amiens, 
there is the village of Beaumetz, while in Savoy, 
one of the villages in the region of Aix-les-Bains 
is named Metz. On the German side of the 
language frontier, one of the small burgs on the 
eastern slopes of the Vosges Mountains is known as 
Metzeral, and on the River Lahn, where the River 
Dill joins it, rises just outside of Wetzlar the small 
hill of Metzeburg. Instances of the use of the 
name Metz in one way or another in both languages 
could be multiplied. So it is evident that the 
name is common to both languages. But as the 
Lorraine town of Metz-la-Pucelle on the River 
Moselle is situated in a French speaking land 
and is surrounded on all sides with villages with 
French names, it seems safe to say that the name 
of that city is a French contraction from Medio- 
matricii rather than of German origin as are the 
names of Bremen or Frankfurt, for example. 

In a speech in the Reichstag in 1887, on the 
septanate military bill, Bismarck admitted that 
Metz was within the area of French speech, and 



36 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

was not annexed on the ground that it was a long 
lost German city.* It was taken from France in 
1 87 1, the Chancellor said, upon the advice of 
Marshal Moltke, the elder, for military reasons. 
In the peace negotiations, Thiers had told Bismarck 
rather than give up both Belfort and Metz, France 
would fight on. So Bismarck, who was anxious 
to conclude peace before the neutral powers began 
to interfere, consulted Moltke, as to whether they 
could allow one or the other to remain in French 
hands. The Marshal replied: "Belfort, yes! Metz 
is worth 100,000 men; the question is whether we 
wish to be 100,000 men weaker against France, 
if war breaks out again, or not." Thereupon 
Bismarck said to Thiers: "We will take Metz!" 
So in a speech delivered in the German Imperial 
Parliament a propos of an important military 
measure, the founder of the modern German 
Empire recognized publicly that in annexing Metz, 
the Germans were not recovering a German city 
filled with their long lost German brothers and 
sisters, but on the contrary that the Germans 
were taking a French town inhabited by French 

* Die Rcdcn des Ministerprdsidenten und Reichskanzlers Fursten 
von Bismarck: edited by Horst Kohl, Stuttgart, 1894, Volume XII., 
page 187. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. V7 

men and women, solely for the reason that thereby 
much strength would be added for the future to 
the military position of Germany. Also Metz was 
taken to enable Germany to annex French villages 
west and northwest of Metz, because of the rich 
iron ore deposits in the soil below. 
^ The chief city of Lorraine is Nancy. It was 
left to France by the peace of Frankfurt; and 
during the present war has remained fortunately 
at all times in the hands of the French. As a 
result the town with its many historic and beautiful 
buildings and mementoes of the past has been 
spared the fate of wanton destruction that has 
overtaken Noyon, St. Quentin, Reims and other 
places of northern France. 

The center of Nancy is the Place Stanislaus, 
named after Stanislaus Lesczynski, ex-King of 
Poland. He died in 1766, was the last duke of 
Lorraine, and laid out the Place Stanislaus from 
1752 to 1757. But he was not a member of the 
ancient ducal house of Lorraine. When Francis of 
Lorraine, the last of his house to rule over the 
duchy, was betrothed to Maria Theresa, daughter 
of the Emperor Charles the Sixth, an exchange 
of territory was made whereby Francis of Lorraine 
should not carry his French speaking duchy with 



38 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

him to be added to the large possessions of the 
Hapsburgs, but that the duchy should eventually 
be added to the lands of the French crown. The 
duchy of Tuscany in northern Italy was at that 
time without a ruler. Accordingly, Francis of Lor- 
raine, in exchange for giving up his own duchy of 
Lorraine, was chosen ruler of Tuscany. By his mar- 
riage to Maria Theresa, the latter duchy was added 
to the conglomeration of lands that belonged to the 
House of Hapsburg. At the same time it was 
agreed that Stanislaus should be duke of the duchy 
of Lorraine as successor to Francis. The new duke's 
wife was a daughter of Louis Quinze; and it was 
arranged that after Stanislaus's death the duchy 
should revert to the French crown. In these shift- 
ings of sovereignty, the inhabitants were not con- 
sulted. But the result was that the French speak- 
ing people of the duchy of Lorraine were joined 
eventually to the kingdom of France, instead of to the 
non-French speaking possessions of the Hapsburgs, 
One of the mediaeval gates of Nancy, la Porte 
Saint-Nicholas, still remains. Upon its sides may 
be seen la croix de la Lorraine, the same cross that 
so many thousands of people have so often seen 
on the jars of preserved white and red currants 
put up at Bar-le-Duc. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 39 

On the Promenade de la Papiniere there is a 
statue of Claude Gellee, dit le Lorrain, by Rodin. 
Gellee, who was born in 1610 at the chateau de 
Champagne on the River Moselle near Mirecourt 
and who died in 1682, is considered as the great 
pioneer of modern out of door landscape painting. 
Turner thought so much of Claude Lorrain 's work 
that in his will giving all his own paintings and 
drawings to the National Gallery, he stipulated that 
two specific examples of his own paintings should 
be hung side by side with two of Claude's pictures 
that belonged to the Gallery. And since that 
time those four pictures have hung as Turner 
stipulated, and neither Claude's nor Turner's work 
loses by the comparison. 

In June, 1897, when I visited Nancy, which the 
Pan-Germanists call Nanzig and claim is a part of 
the greater Germany, the capital of the ancient 
duchy of Lorraine, an incident prophetic of later 
events occurred. A travelling theatrical company 
happened to be in town the day I arrived, and in 
the evening gave in the municipal theatre on the 
Place Stanislaus, a representation of Michael Stro- 
goff, the Courier of the Tzar, only a little before 
the defensive alliance between France and Russia 
had been proclaimed to the world. In the play 



40 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

that evening the two correspondents represented 
respectively a French and an EngHsh journal. At 
one point in the play, the English correspondent, 
placing one of his arms about the neck of his 
French confrere, said: "Les Anglais et les Fran- 
^ais doivent etre des amis. Ensemble il peuvent 
battre le monde." (The English and French must 
be friends. Together they can beat the world.) 

In the unfortified capital of Lorraine, almost 
within the range then of the German heavy artillery 
in the forts on the hills about Metz, this exclama- 
tion roused the whole audience. A storm of 
applause broke forth, and it was repeated again 
and again, so that there could be no doubt in the 
mind of any one in the house that the sons and 
daughters of Lorraine wished to be on terms of 
friendship with England, against whom five cen- 
turies before Joan of Arc had led the armies of 
France. 

At Nancy the hotel porter who came up to brush 
my shoes was named Schmidt. He told me he was 
an Alsacian and had received permission from his 
Kreismicister to come to Nancy to work. "Your 
name is a German one," I said. "But it is also a 
French name," came the prompt reply, "for many 
Frenchmen are so called." From something in his 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 41 

manner, however, I have always more than half 
suspected that he was a German officer who spoke 
French exceedingly well, in fact too well, for an 
Alsacian of the humbler class; and who was work- 
ing at Nancy in the guise of an Alsacian by order 
of the German Government to pick up such infor- 
mation as he could about what the French were 
doing in the capital of Lorraine and the surround- 
ing country. 

In the western part of Nancy, the Faubourg 
Saint Jean is built on the marsh wherein the body 
of Charles the Bold was found after the battle of 
Nancy. The exact spot is marked by a small 
Croix de Bourgoyne. Nancy has an equestrian 
statue of Due Rene Deux of Lorraine, who defeated 
Charles the Bold. Nancy also has a statue of 
Adolphe Thiers. In Nancy there is a Rue du 
Mont Desert, the same name that Champlain gave 
to the famous summer resort on the Maine coast. 
The University of Nancy has a school of forestry, 
the only one in France. 

In speaking of Lorraine, Jeanne d'Arc must not 
be forgotten. There is an admirable statue of her 
on the Place des Pyramides at Paris. This monu- 
ment of the French girl who roused the spirit of 
her uncrowned King and the French to drive the 



42 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

armies of the stranger back towards the borders 
of France, and then lead the Dauphin to Reims to 
be crowned as Charles Sept, was erected some 
years after the war with Prussia to give visual 
expression to the thoughts of the French people, 
that from the land of France once more, as in the 
past, the invader must be driven out. There is 
almost a replica of it in Fairmount Park, Philadel- 
phia, near the Girard Avenue Bridge. 

In deciding whether Lorraine is a French or a 
German land, it is well to remember that the 
village of Domremy, where Johanne la honyie Lor- 
raine was born, is in Lorraine. And also it is well 
not to forget that this daughter of France, whose 
speech was French, left her home in the eastern 
part of the French King's domains to travel towards 
the west and not the east in order that she might 
meet and then help her liege lord the Dauphin, 
to be crowned at Reims King of France. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 43 



IV. 

At the southern extremity of French Lorraine, 
there is the Territory of Belfort, the southern 
corner of Alsace that was not taken from France 
in 1 87 1 by Germany. If there were nothing else 
of interest in or about Belfort, the great lion built 
there by Bartholdi to commemorate the successful 
defense of the town by the French in the Franco- 
Prussian war would amply repay the intelligent 
traveller for visiting Belfort. 

In June, 1894, after spending a day at Reims to 
see once more its glorious cathedral, I stopped, en 
route for Switzerland, at Belfort. Arriving in the 
evening, I was up early the next day. From 
r Hotel de la Poste, near the railroad station, I 
could see rising above the town on the other side 
of the Savoureuse, the little stream upon which 
Belfort is situated, the great rock on whose side 
Bartholdi built up his lion, which is destined per- 
haps to be as well known in the world as 
Thorvalsen's famous lion, that the Danish sculptor 
carved at Lucerne out of the rock of the solid cliff 
to the memory of the Swiss guard of Louis Seize. 
August e Bartholdi of Colmar is the Alsacian sculp- 



44 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

tor who created the statue of Liberty enhghtening 
the World which rises in New York Harbor. 

The rock of Belfort rises out of the low and flat 
strip of land that runs between the Vosges Moun- 
tains on the north and the Jura Range on the south. 
That valley forms a natural highway between 
Alsace on the one side and Burgundy on the other. 
The rock of Belfort in past centuries was the guard 
house that dominated that natural highway, known 
in history as la Porte de Bourgogne, or la Trouee 
de Belfort. The possession of that road has ever 
been a military advantage and strength to whom- 
ever was so fortunate as to hold the rock of Bel- 
fort. Under the protection of that natural fortress, 
the small town of Belfort grew. From Gallic 
times, it has been crowned with a fortification of 
some kind, until in comparatively recent centuries 
the French built upon its top a citadel. Then, 
during the war of 1870-71, they encircled the town 
with forts and trenches. After that war they built 
great forts far out in all directions from the town. 

French is spoken in Belfort and the surrounding 
villages today as it was likewise spoken in 1870 
before the war with Prussia. On the Place d'Armes 
there is a monument known as le Monument Quand 
Meme. On the side a medallion contains bas 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 45 

relief profiles of Colonel Denfert-Rochereau and 
President Thiers. For these two men together 
saved in 1871 Belfort to France; one by his mili- 
tary ability; the other by his diplomatic skill. On 
top there is a figure of an Alsacian woman who 
has taken up the arms of a French soldier who has 
just been shot. The statue seems to say, "Quand 
meme," ("Nevertheless I will struggle on for 
France against the stranger."). 

I had some difficulty in finding the road to the 
foot of the rock, so that I might mount to the 
platform in front of Bartholdi's lion. I asked the 
way of one or two civilians who did not seem to 
realize that there was a lion built in stone up there. 
In fact, one of these men told me there was but 
one railroad station in the town, and that it was 
used alike by the trains bound for Paris and Lyons. 
For my inquiry about the lion of Bartholdi he 
translated in his mind to mean the city of Lyons. 
That any one would stop off to see the monument 
erected to Denfert-Rochereau and his troops never 
occurred to him. Finally, I inquired of a soldier 
and as he was himself bound for the citadel, he 
was only too glad to show me the way. 

A colossal figure, about eighty feet long and 
forty high, the lion is lying down on his hind legs, 



46 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

but raised on his fore legs, with his head erect and 
defiant. A splendid image of a lion at bay, it 
truly personifies the French defense of the town 
in 1 87 1 under Denfert-Rochereau. It is built up 
with great blocks of stone against the side of the 
rock upon which the old citadel of Belfort 
stands. 

When I stood at the feet of this colossal lion a 
Frenchman whom I found there pointed out a 
hill not very far away to the northwest of the 
town where the Germans by building parallels 
tried hard to place their batteries. "If the Ger- 
mans had succeeded in planting their cannons 
there," he said, "they would have dominated our 
defences, and we should no longer today be French. 
But our 'General,'" he called Colonel Denfert- 
Rochereau by that title, "our General hurled so 
many shells upon that hill that the Germans were 
not able to effect a lodgment there. And so today 
we are French and the tri-color floats over the 
citadel there above us." Then he pointed out to 
me the modern forts way up on the Vosges Moun- 
tains at Giromagny and other places far beyond 
the range of the cannon of 1870 and '71. 

Across the front below the lion you notice 
the inscription: Aux defenseurs de Belfort. Well, 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 47 

the lion who commanded those defenders and 
enabled M. Thiers to retain Belfort for France in 
the peace negotiations with Prince Bismarck was 
Colonel Denfert-Rochereau. He was a native of 
Saint Maixent, in the department of the Deux- 
Sevres, in the west of France, and belonged to 
the French Reformed Church. This French Prot- 
estant soldier — who held with success the Germans 
at bay at Belfort in 1870-71 as Caspar de Coligny 
checked the army of Philip the Second of Spain at 
Saint Quentin in 1552 until Henri Deux could 
collect the French forces together — has linked the 
name of Denfort-Rochereau as inseparably with 
Belfort as the noble Catholic Bishop of Metz, 
Monseigneur Dupont des Loges had bound his own 
name with the latter town. The energetic and 
successful defense of Belfort by Denfert-Rochereau 
against the army of General von der Thann not 
only saved Belfort and a corner of Alsace to France 
in 1 87 1, but likewise the Lutheran French speak- 
ing town of Montbeliard with a number of villages 
about it. Originally Montbeliard passed by mar- 
riage in 1397 to the German House of Wittenberg. 
By the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the religion 
of the Prince was to be the religion of the land 
within the lands of the Holy Roman Empire. As 



48 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

the House of Wittenberg belonged to the Confes- 
sion of Augsburg, the inhabitants of the French 
speaking town of Montbehard, which the Germans 
call Montpelgard, together with the surrounding 
villages, were secured in their adherence to the 
Confession of Augsburg. Montbeliard in that way 
became a refuge for the oppressed French Prot- 
estants of the surrounding lands. That explains 
why this little French town, one of whose most 
illustrious sons was the scientist Georges Cuvier, 
professes the Lutheran religion. In grateful recog- 
nition of the saving of its French nationality, in 
1 87 1, the town of Montbeliard erected a monu- 
ment to Denfert-Rochereau. Though he never was 
promoted to the rank of general in the French 
army, Denfert-Rochereau commanded as a suc- 
cessful general in his defense of Belfort. In 1871 
he was elected as a Republican by Belfort in the 
Department of the Upper Rhine to the National 
Assembly at Bordeaux. 

To-day, besides the monument to the memory 
of Denfert-Rochereau at Montbeliard and that in 
connection with Thiers at Belfort, there is a monu- 
ment to him in his native town of Saint- Maixent 
and also in the Bois-de-Boulogne at Paris. A 
propos of this successful French military com- 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 49 

mander in the war of 1870-71, the lines, famous in 
France, of Henry de Bornier, may well be quoted: 

"0 France! douce France! 6 ma France benie, 
Rien n'epuisera done ta force et ton genie! 
^ ^ ^ 

"Puisque, malgre tes jours de deuil et de misere, 
Tu trouves un heros des qu'il est necessaire!" 

"0 France! sweet France! Oh my adored France, 
Nothing then can exhaust thy strength and 
thy genius! 

Hs * * 

"Since, despite thy days of mourning and misery, 
Thou findest a hero as soon as he is needed!" 



50 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 



V. 

There are some radical differences between Alsace 
on the one hand and Lorraine on the other. Alsace 
is peopled almost entirely, as we have seen above, 
by a race of Teutonic stock, while Lorraine is 
inhabited for the most part by French people. 
Thus the language boundary between French 
and German gives to the French language one or 
two villages at the southern end of Alsace, which 
are backed up against French speaking Switzer- 
land, but not adjoining France. A little further 
north, on the German side of the frontier of 
1 87 1, opposite to B effort, there are more villages 
speaking French. Higher up still, northwest from 
Colmar, the French language passes over the 
frontier at the top of the Col du Bonhomme 
and spreads down into the upper part of the 
valley of the Weiss. Further north still, oppo- 
site Schlettstadt, French again appears on the 
eastern slope of the Vosges, running up to the 
Mont Donon. The rest of Alsace is a German 
speaking land. In Lorraine the language boundary 
begins on the slopes of the Donon and, with local 
zigzags and loops, runs in a generally northwesterly 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 51 

direction until it reaches the southern frontier of 
Luxembourg, just a little east of the present Franco- 
German frontier. The language frontier leaves Sar- 
reburg, Bolchen and Diedenhofen (in French, 
Thionville) within the area of German speech, 
while Dieuze, Pange, Metz, Fontoy (in German 
Fentsch) are on the French side of the language 
frontier. If the annexed portion of Lorraine where 
French is spoken by the native population, which 
includes le pays Messin and the territory about 
Chateau Salins and Dieuze to the top of the Mont 
Donon, is added to all of Lorraine which was left 
to France in 1871, it is readily seen that only a 
small part of the former province of Lorraine falls 
within the area of the German tongue. 

The line of the language boundary has varied 
but little in the course of the centuries. Sometimes 
one language has gained a little, and sometimes the 
other, at the expense of the rival tongue. It was 
along the crest of the Vosges Mountains which in 
the main separate Alsace and Lorraine from one 
another, that the advance of Roman customs and 
the influence of the Latin language was stopped. 
The language frontier has in the main run along 
the summits of the Vosges Mountains, leaving 
Alsace for the most part within the area of German 



52 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Speech, and Lorraine with a smaU exception within 
the range of the French idioms. Passing north- 
ward into the Low Countries the boundary between 
Walloon and Flemish has varied but little in the 
flux and reflux of the Latin and the Germanic 
dialects. Outside of the slow and gradual but 
ever steady pushing back, since the reign of Louis 
Quatorze, of Flemish by French in French Flanders, 
the chief change has been a gain for French at the 
expense of Flemish in the cities of Flanders, espec- 
ially in the city of Brussels. In the latter town, 
where originally only Flemish was spoken, four- 
fifths of the inhabitants now use French as their 
mother tongue. Practically an island of French 
speech which has gradually grown up within the 
area of one of the Low Dutch branches of the 
Germanic dialects, Brussels in all probability before 
many years will be firmly anchored on its south- 
eastern and eastern sides to the Walloon speaking 
district of Belgium. 

While the language frontier between the French 
and the Germanic dialects has not changed very 
much for a thousand years, the divisional line 
between the lands that owed allegiance to the 
Germanic Emperor on the one hand and the French 
King on the other has varied greatly. And this 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 53 

variation in the political allegiance of the lands 
lying between the Germanic Empire on the one 
side and the rising Kingdom of France on the other 
were all the greater owing to the partial but finally 
unsuccessful growth in feudal times of another 
political social organism round the house of 
Burgundy. 

Ever since 1871 a great deal has been heard in 
the world at large about the names Alsace and 
Lorraine meaning only the land transferred at the 
end of the Franco-Prussian War from France to 
Germany. The names ''Alsace and Lorraine," how- 
ever, are a misnomer if applied merely to the land 
ceded by France and annexed to Germany by the 
treaty of peace signed at Frankfurt on May loth, 
1 87 1. For the names Alsace and Lorraine signi- 
fied in 1870, much more territory than the Reichs- 
land or Land of the Empire, which Germany gained 
at the expense of France at the close of the Franco- 
Prussian War. In the first place, a small part of 
northern Alsace, including the city of Landau, 
and a portion of northern Lorraine, including 
Sarrelouis on the River Sarre, were taken from 
France and annexed respectively to Bavaria and 
Prussia in 181^ by the Second Congress of Vienna. 
In the second place, while it is true that almost all 



54 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

of Alsace was taken from France by the peace of 
Frankfurt, nevertheless, by that peace France lost 
not more than about a quarter of the ancient 
Ducal Province of Lorraine. Also after the loth 
of May, 1 87 1, France still retained a small portion 
of southwestern Alsace, the town of Belfort and a 
little land about it. So when the names Alsace and 
Lorraine are used, it must not be forgotten that 
that pair of names designates a territory much 
larger than the extent of the territory ceded by 
France to Germany in 187 1. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 55 



VI. 

The various political changes which in all the 
centuries since Charlemagne have overtaken the 
lands known for approximately a thousand years 
under the names of Alsace and Lorraine demand, 
for a clear understanding of the question of Alsace 
and Lorraine that was born in 1871, a brief his- 
torical survey of the varying fortunes that have 
taken place in the development of those lands. 

Originally when Julius Caesar conquered the 
Gauls about the middle of the first century before 
the Christian era, the River Rhine was the bound- 
ary between the Celts on the west and the Teutons 
on the east. It was owing to the occupancy for 
so long by the Romans of all the lands west of the 
Rhine that the great cities on the banks of that 
river, such as Koln or Cologne (Colonia Agripinna), 
Coblentz ( Confluent ia) , Strasbourg ( Argent oratum) 
are mostly found on its left or western bank. 

About nine centuries after the Roman conquest 
of the Gauls, the beginning of the cleavage that 
resulted in time in the difference between the 
French and the German civilizations and in the 
course of later centuries resolved itself in the forma- 



56 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

tion of the modern French and German Nations, 
took concrete expression in the famous Strasbourg 
oaths of 842, The territorial possession that Char- 
lemagne's genius had welded into a vast empire, 
which in men's minds was somehow looked upon 
as a continuation of the empire of the Caesars, was 
about to be divided between the three grand- 
sons of the great Carlovingian emperor. The two 
younger grandsons, Charles the Bald, v/ho was to 
receive lands in the west, and Louis the German, 
who was to have lands in the east, were in fear of 
the power of the eldest brother, Lothaire, who 
was to rule from the North Sea to below the River 
Tiber in the middle lands between the possessions 
of the other two. Accordingly the year before the 
treaty of Verdun of 843, the two younger grand- 
sons met with their armies at Argent oratum, the 
present Strasbourg on the River 111 near the Rhine. 
There they swore to an identical oath to support 
one another in case of need, against a possible 
attack from Lothaire. Charles the Bald took it 
in the lingua teudisca before the army of Louis the 
German; and the latter swore to it in the lingua 
romana before the assembled hosts of Charles the 
Bald. Both idioms doubtless were understood by 
most of the inhabitants of Argentoratum just as 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 57 

French and German are the joint possession of the 
great majority of Strasbourgers to-day. 

In Lothaire's Middle Kingdom were included 
Alsace and all of the later Duchy of Lorraine. It 
was from Lothaire's name that the name of Lothar- 
ingia was given to a large tract of his possessions. 
Applied to an ever varying extent of land including 
at first in part the Netherlands and also the region 
of the upper Moselle and the Meuse, the name 
Lorraine finally in the heyday of the feudal system 
came to be applied to a Duchy along the upper 
reaches of the Moselle and the Meuse, with which 
at various times through the rules of succession 
of the feudal law were joined and incorporated 
the smaller Duchies of Bar and Vaudemont. 

It was only about 870 when Lothaire's Middle 
Kingdom, then nominally ruled over by his grand- 
son, was curtailed to the advantage of his two 
younger brothers, that Louis the German entered 
into possession of Alsace. Then the Vosges Moun- 
tains, instead of the River Rhine which in earlier 
times had divided the Germanic tribes from Celtic 
Gaul, became the boundary between the Germanic 
and the Prankish lands. 

As the vast empire moulded and held together 
by the genius of Charlemagne disintegrated with 



58 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

the passing of the years into the vast number of 
small feudal holdings that were better adapted 
to the conditions of the time, the feudal house that 
ruled at Paris on the River Seine known as the 
Capetian House, became absolutely independent 
and free of all control of the Germanic Empire that 
succeeded that of the Carlo vingians. The Cape- 
tians, starting with Paris as the kernel of their 
landed possessions, extended decade by decade 
gradually upon the basis of the feudal law their 
territorial holdings, sometimes by conquest and 
sometimes by marriage. In time their domain 
developed into the Kingdom of France. That 
kingdom which was infinitely smaller at first than 
modern France, was ruled by the house founded by 
Hugh Capet. And it was the policy of the suc- 
cessors of Hugh Capet to extend their rule more 
and more over various feudal lands that spoke 
French idioms. And so in time the Kings of France 
became gradually stronger and stronger. 

As the Carlovingian Empire broke up, however, 
concurrently with the rise of the kingdom of France 
in the west outside of the scope of the Germanic 
Empire, the feudal lords of what is to-day all of 
Alsace, as well under French as German rule, and 
the major portion of the modern province of Lor- 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE, 59 

raine on both sides of the frontier of 1871, besides 
much else of present day France, acknowledged 
the Germanic Emperor as their feudal overlord 
and protector. Only a comparatively small part 
of the fiefs that became in time part of western 
Lorraine were held immediately or mediately of 
the French King at Paris as suzerain. 

In the best times of the feudal system, among 
the lands that were independent of the Duchy of 
Lorraine but subsequently became part of the 
province of Lorraine, under French rule, were the 
three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun. The 
three ecclesiastical lord bishops of Metz, Toul and 
Verdun held their lands as fiefs of the Emperor 
of the so-called Holy Roman Empire, but that 
came in truth in time to be the Germanic Empire, 
and acknowledged the Germanic Emperor as their 
feudal overlord, exactly as the ecclesiastical lord 
bishops of Mainz, Cologne (Koln), and Halber- 
stadt also did. But there was this radical differ- 
ence between the two triumvirates of towns. In 
Metz, Toul and Verdun, French dialects were 
spoken, while at Mainz, Cologne and Halberstadt, 
German idioms were current. In 1552 Henri 
Deux, who was befriending the Protestant Princes 
of Germany against their overlord, the Catholic 



60 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Germanic Emperor, seized with the full approval of 
Maurice, Elector of Saxony, Albert, Elector of Bran- 
denburg, and other German Protestant Princes, who 
were the virtual allies of the King of France, the 
three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and 
almost at once had them formally united by the 
action of the Chambres de reunioft with the Kingdom 
of France. But to-day no one with the least 
knowledge of the past and present history of Cen- 
tral Europe would assert that Toul and Verdun 
are Germanic towns that by language and racial 
affinities belong of right to modern Germany, 
because in times past the lord bishops of Toul and 
Verdun looked up to the Germanic Emperor as 
their liege overlord and those two towns according 
to the feudal law were considered to form part and 
parcel of the Empire. And just as truly as Toul 
and Verdun are French towns, so Metz, too, is a 
French city that has grown up within the area of 
the French patois or dialects. Until 1871, Metz 
was inhabited by men and women of the French 
race: and, excepting the German immigrants who 
have settled there since the peace of Frankfurt, it 
is still inhabited by the French race, though it 
has formed ever since the loth of May, 1871, a 
political part of the modern German Empire. 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 61 

The only claim that four-fifths of the old French 
province of Lorraine was originally a German land 
that the French annexed, a portion at a time, and 
then Gallicized, is that the three bishoprics, as well 
as portions of the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar, 
came, in one way or another, according to the 
rules of the feudal law, to form a part of the Holy 
Roman Empire. 

During the Middle Ages, however, within the 
area of French idioms to the west of the Vosges 
Mountains, the cities of Metz, Toul and Verdun 
with their surrounding territories, and the Duchy 
of Bar and much of that of Lorraine and neighbor- 
ing fiefs were not the only lands to acknowledge 
the Germanic Emperor as their feudal overlord. 
Next to Switzerland on its western side, Franche- 
Comte, and even lands further south lying between 
the Alps and the River Rhone, looked in those 
times also to the Emperor as their feudal superior 
and were considered to form part of the Empire. 
If you sailed, some years ago, down the River 
Rhone from Lyons to the sea, you could hear the 
people speak of the right bank as the "Royaume" 
and the left bank as the "Empire." These terms 
had come down from the time when the right bank 
belonged to the Kings of France and the left to the 



62 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Holy Roman Empire. Yet no one would say that 
the people of the left bank were not Frenchmen 
simply because their lands, some centuries ago, 
formed part of that conglomeration of races 
and feudal holdings, the so called Holy Roman 
Empire of which Voltaire said with much truth 
that "it was neither Holy, Roman, nor an 
Empire." 

The three bishoprics, through conquest, and the 
Duchies of Bar and Lorraine, partly by conquest 
and partly by marriage, were all incorporated with 
the Kingdom of France much later than another 
French province, Bretagne, was through marriage. 
And unlike the three bishoprics, the Duchy of Bar 
and most of the Duchy of Lorraine, which were 
all within the area of the French patois, Bretagne 
was not a French speaking land. Even today 
Bretagne retains in many places its ancient Celtic 
tongue. When the Duchy of Bretagne, where the 
Salic Law did not obtain, descended to Anne de 
Bretagne, as Duchess in her own right, the Emperor 
Maximilian of Hapsburg was most anxious to add 
such a rich prize to his ancestral domains. Accord- 
ingly, he succeeded in marrying Anne de Bretagne 
by proxy. But the counsellors of the French King 
decided that it would never do to allow so large a 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 63 

land lying to the west of the possessions of the 
French crown to pass into the hands of the House 
of Hapsburg. Accordingly, proclaiming that the 
rnarriage by proxy was not binding and a finality, 
since it had not been consummated, they prevailed 
on the Duchess of Bretagne, by capturing her and 
the city of Rennes, to marry their own King, 
Charles Huit. By that marriage Bretagne was 
brought into political union with the lands of the 
French Crown. So important to the safety of the 
possessions of the French Crown did the leading 
statesmen of France consider a close union with 
Bretagne that, upon the death of Charles Huit 
without surviving issue, they at once insisted that 
his successor, a cousin, Louis Douze, should divorce 
his wife, who was a sister of Charles Huit, and then 
become the second husband of Anne de Bretagne. 
As there were no sons of this royal union between 
Anne de Bretagne and Louis Douze, upon the 
death of the King the lands of France, where 
the Salic Law prevailed, did not pass to his daugh- 
ter, Claude de France, but to a cousin, Francois 
d'Angouleme, who then became King as Frangois 
Premier. Bretagne, however, where the Salic Law 
was not recognized, passed upon the death of Anne 
de Bretagne to the daughter of Anne and Louis 



64 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Douze, who was known as Claude de France. 
Accordingly, to prevent, by the feudal law, Bretagne 
being broken off from its political union with the 
French Crown lands and perhaps passing eventually 
by marriage to the House of Hapsburg, a marriage 
was arranged between Frangois d'Angouleme and 
Claude de France. In that way the close political 
union between the lands of the French Crown and 
the Duchy of Bretagne was continued. Event- 
ually, upon their death, both Bretagne and the 
French Crown lands descended to their son, who 
became, in right of succession from his father. King 
of France as Henri Deux, and also in right of suc- 
cession from his mother, Duke of Bretagne. While 
the kingship and the dukeship were thus finally 
united in one and the same person, it was not until 
1598, however, that the Duchy of Bretagne was 
finally, in the person of Henry of Navarre, merged 
into the lands of the French Crown. Thus a land 
lying to the westward of the French speaking lands, 
and where another tongue than French was spoken, 
in the course of about a century and a half was 
finally incorporated by the workings of the feudal 
law with the lands of the French Crown, and in 
that way eventually incorporated into the more 
modern French Nation. But even today, in many 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 65 

parts of Bretagne, Breton and not French is the 
language of every day use among the people. 

After the death of Gustavus Adolphus the Great 
of Sweden in 1632, on the battlefield of Lutzen, 
the German Protestant Princes were hard pressed 
by the Catholic Hapsburg Emperor. In order to 
make headway against the Emperor, the princes 
sought the aid of Louis Treize. The principal 
minister of the French King, Cardinal Richelieu, 
had captured in 1628 the chief stronghold of the 
French Protestants, La Rochelle. At home his 
aim was to suppress so far as possible the military 
and political power of the Huguenots. In his 
foreign policy, however, Richelieu wished to expand 
France and curb and reduce the power of the great 
rival of France, the Imperial and Catholic House 
of Hapsburg. For that reason it was not to the 
interest of France that the German Protestant 
Princes should be submerged by the Catholic 
Emperor. Accordingly, about 1633, at the invita- 
tion of George William, Elector of Brandenburg, 
and other German Protestant Princes, Richelieu, 
who had aided Gustavus Adolphus with French 
subsidies during the Swedish King's German cam- 
paign, agreed with the Protestant Princes in 
exchange for the right of France occupying a large 



66 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

part of what is now modern Alsace, to throw the 
influence of France into the scales of the Thirty 
Years' War on the side of the Protestant Princes 
against the Catholic Emperor. When that long 
and devastating war came to a close in 1648, by 
the Peace of Westphalia, the religious character 
with which it had opened had changed largely to a 
political one. 

By the terms of peace to the King of France, 
•who was by the end of the war in actual possession 
of much of modern Alsace, were officially trans- 
ferred many feudal rights of suzerainty over the 
cities and fiefs which he occupied in Alsace that 
formerly had belonged to the Hapsburg Emperor. 
That gain for Louis Quatorze as feudal overlord 
in much of Alsace at the expense of the Germanic 
Emperor, was the price paid by the German Prot- 
estant Princes for effectual French aid against their 
arch enemy, the Catholic Emperor. 

Outside of this arrangement was the city republic 
of Strasbourg, which was a Free City of the Empire, 
and the city republic of Mulhouse which was affil- 
iated with the Swiss Cantons. More than a genera- 
tion after the Peace of Westphalia, Louis Quatorze, 
owing to the great power of France, was able to 
occupy the Free Imperial City of Strasbourg. By 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 67 

an agreement entered into between the King and 
the city, the burghers were confirmed in all their 
customs and privileges, as well as the free exercise 
of their Protestant religion and, with the exception 
of the cathedral, the possession of their churches 
and other religious establishments. The cathedral 
where the Protestant service had been held since 
1529 was taken in 1681 by the King for Catholic 
worship. 

In Alsace as a whole, and especially in Stras- 
bourg, the French Government did not molest the 
people in their customs and institutions. Espec- 
iall}'' the religious persecutions which were enforced 
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) 
with great vigor in all the other lands of the King 
except Alsace, were practised in the latter province 
in much milder form. In other words, the French 
King did not try to ram French ideas and customs 
down the throats of the Alsacians against their 
will. As a result, the Alsacians who were German 
in race and speech, but were not attached especi- 
ally to the more or less moribund Holy Roman or 
Germanic Empire, gradually almost unconsciously 
began to absorb French thoughts and among the 
upper classes in some cases began to learn the 
French language. 



68 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Then came the French Revolution. One of its 
causes was the desire of the workmen of that day 
to break the restrictive chains that prevented 
them from working freely, the same sort of chains 
which the workmen of to-day, ignorant of those 
their great grandfathers rose against, are so busy 
and anxious to forge through the means of the 
Trade Unions once more about themselves. As a 
result of the French Revolution, the countless 
restrictions that weighed upon the freedom of the 
individual and restricted trade, were suddenly 
removed. The great boon thereby conferred upon 
the people of Alsace as a whole won their hearts 
entirely to France. So much so indeed, that in the 
wars of the Republic and the Great French 
Emperor, Alsace gave her full quota of generals and 
soldiers to the armies of France. And in 1798, the 
free city republic of Mulhouse in southern Alsace, 
which had been in close affiliation for a long time 
with the Swiss Cantons, of its own free will, with- 
out compulsion or force of any sort, joined itself to 
the French Republic. 

While the Kingdom of France ultimately in its 
growth eastward, absorbing not only French speak- 
ing lands but also German ones, was to meet the 
modern German Nation along the boundary of the 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 69 

middle Rhine, another State, whose people spoke 
in part French and in part German, struggled to 
arise between the growing modern France and 
Germany out of the welter of small feudal holdings 
of the Middle Ages. The attempt to create a 
Burgundian Nation between those of modern 
France and Germany reached its farthest develop- 
ment under the ambitious leadership of Charles the 
Bold. His feudal holdings included lands such as 
the County of Burgundy with Besangon as the 
chief city, and many fiefs in the Netherlands, for all 
of which he acknowledged the Germanic Emperor 
as feudal overlord, while other lands, like the 
Duchy of Burgundy with Dijon as its chief city, 
he held of the French King as his feudal overlord. 
At the height of his power, Charles the Bold added 
to his landed possessions much of Alsace by pur- 
chase from the House of Hapsburg. And it was 
as a result of his eager efforts to include the then 
Duchy of Lorraine by conquest with his landed 
possessions that under the walls of Nancy, alike 
then and to-day within the area of French idioms, 
he met his death in battle in 1477 with the army 
under Duke Rene Deux of Lorraine and the latter's 
Swiss allies. 

While in western Europe, England, France and 



70 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

Spain were moulded gradually into three Nations, 
in each case round a royal house, so that at the 
beginning of the Thirty Years' War in 1618 these 
three Nations had grown in large measure out of 
the feudal status which had prevailed all over 
western and central Europe since at least as early a 
time as the seventh century of our era, Britain 
was begun only in 1603. In that year Celtic 
Scotland and Saxon England were united together 
owing to the working of the feudal law which 
placed a Scottish King, in the person of James the 
Sixth of Scotland, upon the English throne as 
James the First of England. In that way Scot- 
land was linked by law with England as in the 
fifteenth century by three successive marriages 
between two Duchesses of Bretagne and three 
Kings of France, Celtic Bretagne was joined to 
Latin France. 

Not until a much later date, the third quarter 
of the nineteenth century, were a German and an 
Italian Nation constructed in central Europe respec- 
tively by the genius of a Bismarck and a Cavour. 

When the National Assembly of France met at 
Bordeaux in 1871 to consider terms of peace with 
Germany, the deputies elected by the departments 
of the Upper Rhine and the Lower Rhine, which 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 71 

together formed in the time of the Old Regime the 
former province of Alsace; and also the deputies 
elected by the four departments of the Meurthe, 
the Moselle, the Meuse and the Vosges, which 
before the French Revolution had constituted the 
ancient province of Lorraine, joined on February 
17th, in a solemn protest against any cession of 
any portion of either Alsace or Lorraine to the 
newly constituted German Empire. The protest 
was written by Gambetta, and read from the 
tribune of the National Assembly by Emile Keller. 
Colonel of the francs-tireurs of the Department of 
the Upper Rhine, Keller, who had fought valiantly 
all through the war in defense of France against 
the German invasion, was an Alsacian and the 
bearer of a German name. He was one of the 
deputies chosen by the Upper Rhine, his name 
being returned at the head of the poll. After 
clearly and forcibly proclaiming at length the 
unalterable desire of the people of Alsace and 
Lorraine to remain French, the representatives of 
the two provinces made this remarkable prophecy 
which time has proved to have been correct: 

' ' Peace made by the price of a cession of territory 
would be nothing but a ruinous truce and not a 
definite peace. It would be for every one a cause 



72 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

of internal agitation, a legitimate and permanent 
provocation of war. And as for us, Alsacians and 
Lorrainers, we will be ready to begin again to-day, 
to-morrow, at every hour, at every instant." 

Then again protesting against any cession of 
territory, the representatives in their declaration 
proclaimed that beforehand they would not 
recognize as binding either for themselves or the 
people who sent them, any treaty or pact what- 
soever which would cede any part of either province 
to the stranger. And the declaration ended by 
saying: 

"We proclaim by the present forever inviolable 
the right of the Alsacians and the Lorrainers to 
remain members of the French nation and we 
swear, as well for ourselves as our constituents, our 
children and their descendants to reclaim it etern- 
ally and against all usurpers." 

On March ist, 1871, when it was known that 
the National Assembly, under the compulsion of 
force, would agree to the cession of most of Alsace 
and a portion of Lorraine, the deputies of the ter- 
ritories that were about to be given up to the 
stranger, made one more formal protest before 
retiring from the deliberation of the Assembly. 
Jules Grosjean, formerly prefect of the Upper 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE, 7Z 

Rhine, and at the time one of the deputies of that 
department, mounted to the tribune of the Assembly 
and read the following declaration: 

**The representatives of Alsace and Lorraine, 
placed, before any peace negotiations were carried 
on, upon the table of the National Assembly, a 
declaration affirming in the most formal manner, 
in the name of those provinces, their wish and 
right to remain French. 

"Handed over, in spite of all justice and by 
an odious abuse of force, to the domination of 
strangers, we have a last duty to perform. 

'*We declare once more null and void a 
pact which disposes of us without our consent- 
ment. 

"The revindication of our rights remains forever 
open to all and everyone in the manner and the 
measure that our conscience shall dictate. 

"At the moment of leaving this hall where our 
self respect does not allow us longer to remain, 
and in spite of the bitterness of our sorrow, the 
supreme thought which we find in our inmost 
hearts is a thought of grateful appreciation for 
those who, during six months, have not ceased to 
defend us and the unchangeable attachment of the 
country from which we are violently snatched. 



74 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

"We will follow you with our wishes and we 
will wait, with a perfect confidence the future, 
that regenerated France takes up again the course 
of her great destiny. 

''Your brothers of Alsace and Lorraine, separ- 
ated at this time from the common family, will 
conserve for France, absent from their homes, a 
filial affection until the day when she will return 
to reoccupy her place." 

The next day the Republican deputies, to the 
number of thirty-seven, including Clemenceau, the 
present war premier, sent an address to the depu- 
ties of the lands about to be handed over to Ger- 
many, in which they said that they in the name 
of Republican France would not be bound by any 
agreement whatsoever that would cut off Alsace 
and part of Lorraine from France. 

So even weeks before peace was formally con- 
cluded and proclaimed at Frankfurt on May loth, 
1 87 1, the populations of Alsace and annexed Lor- 
raine clearly and forcibly made known to all the 
world that they wished to remain attached to 
France and did not want to be handed over to be 
joined to Germany. The peoples of the annexed 
lands were of one mind on that point from the 
start. And they made their wishes known so that 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 75 

every one in the world, even in Germany, could 
understand, except those that did not wish to hear 
or understand. 

Ever since the treaty of Frankfurt was signed 
and most of Alsace and a part of Lorraine were 
taken away from France, the French people have 
cherished in their hearts the hope that some day 
the lost provinces wiould be restored to France. 
This sentiment was expressed by Gambetta, who 
said: Pensons y toujours, mais n'en parlous pas! 

The thoughts of the French people for the lost 
provinces have been expressed in various ways. 

In almost every town in France there is either a 
Boulevard d'Alsace-Lorraine, or an Avenue de Metz 
and an Avenue de Strasbourg, a Rue de Mulhouse 
or a Boulevard Gambetta, an Avenue Thiers or 
a Rue Denfert-Rochereau. 

Especially at Paris on the 14th of July, the 
national fete day, the Alsacian-Lorrain societies 
have placed with great solemnity, in the presence 
of many thousands of people, upon the statue 
personifying the city of Strasbourg, on the Place 
de la Concorde, funeral badges. Those signs of 
mourning the Statue of Strasbourg has worn until 
the next 14th of July, when the Alsacian-Lorrain 
societies have taken them down to replace them 



7(y THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

with fresh badges of mourning upon the head and 
robes of "Strasbourg." 

■ One of the most potent causes of attachment of 
France for Alsace is the historic fact that at Stras- 
bourg was composed the soul stirring national 
hymn of France — la Marseillaise. On April 24th, 
1792, when the declaration of war by France against 
Austria was known in Strasbourg, Mayor Dietrich 
rode through the town with a military escort and 
read aloud to the townspeople the declaration. 
That same evening he asked a French officer then 
in garrison at Strasbourg, Captain Rouget de 
risle, who was known as both a poet and a com- 
poser, to write and compose a patriotic song that 
would suit the crisis. Accordingly, Rouget de 
risle closeted himself for a day in his room, and 
the next evening, in the parlors of Mayor Dietrich, 
the young officer of the Republic brought to a few 
assembled Alsacians, the Chant de guerre pour 
V Armee du Rhin. It was sung by the mayor. 
Acclaimed on that occasion, and gaining a local 
celebrity, it was introduced to all France a few 
months later and ultimately to the world, by a 
regiment of troops from the city of Marseille. As 
the regiment marched north on its way to join 
the army of the Rhine, the soldiers sang le Chant 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 77 

de guerre pour V Armee du Rhin. In every town 
and hamlet through which they passed it was 
popularly taken up and sung by the people. And 
as it was thus introduced to the French people by 
a regiment from Marseille, it was spontaneously 
named the Marseillaise. But in truth Rouget de 
r Isle's immortal song, which resounded in 19 14 all 
along the battle of the Marne and on many another 
stricken field, should be known as la Strashour- 
geoise. For it was in the chief city of Alsace that 
it was born and first sung. 

Less than four years after the signing of the 
peace of Frankfurt, the feeling of attachment of all 
France for Alsace was admirably expressed by 
Henri de Bornier in la chanson des deux sabres in 
his play, la Fille de Roland. The piece was given for 
the first time on February 15th, 1875, au Theatre 
Frangais with Mounet-Sully as Gerald, who sings 
the song of the two swords. When Mounet-Sully 
finished the song on that night, the theatre rang 
with the applause of the whole audience until the 
theatre echoed and re-echoed. But it was not 
Mounet-Sully, great actor that he was, that the 
audience applauded, but the meaning conveyed in 
that song. Bornier said in language that was 
unmistakable to every Frenchman and French- 



78 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

woman what all France was thinking but not 
talking about. 

"La France, dans ce siecle, eut deux grandes 
epees, 
Deux glaives, I'un royal et I'autre feodal, 
Dont les lames d'un jElot divin furent trempees; 
L'une a pour nom Joyeuse, et I'autre Durandal. 

"Roland eut Durandal. Charlemagne a Joyeuse. 
Soeurs jumelles de gloire, heroines d'acier. 
En qui vivait du fer I'ame mysterieuse, 
Que pour son oeuvre Dieu voulut s'associer. 

Toutes les deux dans les melees 
Entraient jetant leur rude eclair, 
Et les bannieres etoilees 
Les suivaient en fiottant dans Fair! 
Quand elles faisaient leur ouvrage, 
L'etranger fremissant de rage, 
Sarrazins, Saxons, ou Danois, 
Tourbe hurlante et carnassiere, 
Tombait dans la rouge poussiere, 
De ces formidable tournois! 

Durandal a conquis I'Espagne; 
Joyeuse a dompte le Lombard: 
Chacune a sa noble compagne 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE, 79 

Pouvait dire: Void ma part! 
Toutes les deux ont par le monde 
Suivi, chass4 le crime immonde, 
Vaincu les paiens en tout lieu; 
Apres mille et mille batailles, 
Aucune d'elles n'a d'entailles 
Pas plus que le glaive de Dieu! 

"Helas! La meme fin ne leur est pas donnee: 
Joyeuse est fiere et libre apres tant de combats, 
Et quand Roland perit dans la sombre journee. 
Durandal des paiens fut captive la-bas! 

"Elle est captive encore, et la France la pleure, 
Mais le sort different laisse I'honneur egal, 
Et la France, attendant quelque chance meilleure, 
Aime du meme amour Joyeuse et Durandal!" 



80 THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 



VII. 

The evidence submitted above would seem to 
show conclusively that the lands which Germany 
took from France as a result of the utter defeat of 
the latter by the former in the Franco-Prussian 
war of 1870-71, were peopled by inhabitants who, 
although about eighty-five per cent, of them were 
Germans in race and speech, were unanimous in 
their desire to remain themselves French citizens 
and to have their lands continue to form integral 
parts of the French Republic. And with the 
change of national sovereignty for those lands, 
over a million and a half of people who wished to 
remain French were transformed against their will 
into German subjects, unless they decided to emi- 
grate from their home land. But the transfer of 
nationality was merely on the surface. The 
annexed Alsacians and Lorrainers remained at 
heart French and at the first opportunity they 
proclaimed this fact so that not only all Germany, 
but also all the world knew that their hearts beat 
in unison with France and they looked to the day 
when fortune would unite them once more with her. 

In 1874, three years after the conclusion of the 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 81 

Franco-Prussian war, the people of the annexed 
lands were given the opportunity of electing fifteen 
members to represent the Reichsland in the Imperial 
Parliament at Berlin. And what did the people of 
Alsace and annexed Lorraine do with this oppor- 
tunity? They promptly sank their local differences, 
and united for the electoral campaign with but one 
object in mind, to wit, to send a solid delegation of 
fifteen representatives to the Reichstag at Berlin, 
who would protest against the continued forcible 
separation of Alsace and annexed Lorraine from 
France and their continued inclusion with Germany. 
In spite of the energetic efforts of the German 
functionaries, the people of the annexed lands 
elected almost unanimously the fifteen protesting 
candidates. On the i6th of February the deputies 
of the Reichsland proposed to the Reichstag the 
following motion for future debate: 

"May it please the Reichstag to decide that the 
peoples of Alsace and Lorraine who, without being 
consulted, were annexed by the Treaty of Frank- 
furt to the Germanic Empire, may be called upon 
to vote specifically on that annexation." 

Two days later, on the i8th of February, the 
deputy elected by the district of Saverne or Zabern 
in Lorraine, Edouard Teutsch, arose in the Reichs- 



8Z THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

tag to Speak in support of the motion as the 
unanimous spokesman of the fifteen deputies rep- 
resenting Alsace and annexed Lorraine. As French 
was his national tongue, he asked for leave to speak 
in that language. As that request was naturally 
denied him, he read his speech in a German trans- 
lation, which he had made from the original French. 
The motion moved by M. Teutsch was rejected 
by the Parliament; but the presentation of that 
motion by the fifteen deputies of the Reichsland 
showed to all the world that the populations of the 
annexed lands were united in their opposition to 
German rule. 

From that day until the Great War began, the 
people of Alsace and annexed Lorraine, have again 
and again, whenever an opportunity occurred, 
shown their determined and unyielding opposition 
to German rule and their equally strong desire to 
be united once more with France. 

In view of this unquestionable desire of the 
annexed populations for forty-three long years to 
be freed from German nationality and reincor- 
porated once more with France, it is safe to say 
that one of the chief causes that brought upon the 
world the Great War, was the forcible annexation 
in 1 87 1 of Alsace and part of Lorraine. The 



THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 83 

Spectacle of those lands held in bondage just across 
the frontier was a perpetual reminder to the people 
of France of the dangerous enemy that was on the 
other side of the Vosges Mountains. And in addi- 
tion, the forcible and continued separation from 
France of a million and a half of people who wished 
to be French appealed so strongly to the sympa- 
thies of the French people, that any hope of a final 
peaceful adjustment of the relations between France 
and Germany so long as Alsace and annexed Lor- 
raine remained under German rule was but a pipe 
dream. So it is entirely in the interest of justice 
and the future peace and tranquillity of the world 
that one of the conditions of the treaty that will 
end the World War is the restoration to France of 
the territory that was taken from her in 1871. 

The question of Alsace and Lorraine which has 
run on for close on to half a century may not have 
existed without good to the world if the obvious 
lesson which it teaches is taken to heart by the 
nations. That question shows clearly that, if the 
peoples are really anxious to reduce the chances 
for war to the utmost, in the future no land will be 
transferred from one allegiance to another against 
the avowed protest of the people inhabiting it. 
It will be well to take heed of this lesson at the 



84. THE QUESTION OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE. 

peace table that is to close the World War and 
not repeat the blunder the Germans made in 1871 
in taking Alsace and a portion of Lorraine against 
the publicly and repeatedly expressed protest of 
the Alsacians and the Lorrainers as proclaimied to 
the world through their officially and freely chosen 
representatives to the French National Assembly 
at Bordeaux. The act of territorial vandalism 
committed in 1871 was one of the things that 
insured the World War. Let the nations profit by 
the lesson. 



INDEX 



INDEX. 



PAGE 

Albrecht Durer g 

Albert of Brandenburg 60 

Alsace and Lorraine 1-3, 14, 15, 18, 29, 30, 33, 41-43, 47, 50 

51, 55. 57, 61, 62, 66-69, 71, 75, n, 80-84 

Alsace and Lorraine, protests of 71-74, 80-82 

Amiens 22 

America 20 

Amerigo Vespuccius 19, 20 

Angers, David d' 12 

Arndt, Ernest Moritz 4 

Augustus the Strong of Saxony 12 

Bartholdi, Auguste 43, 45 

Belfort 36, 43-45, 48, 50 

Belfort, Lion of 43, 45, 46 

Bismarck 35, 36, 47, 70 

Bretagne 62-64, 70 

Bretagne, Anne de 62-64 

Bornier, Henri de 49, 77 

Broglie, Place de 7, 13 

Broglie, Prince de 13 

Caesar, Julius 55 

Capet, Hugh 58 

Cavour 70 

Charlemagne 55-57 

Charles the Bald 56 

Charles the Bold 41, 69 

Charles Fifth, Emperor 28 

Charles Huit 63 

Charles Sept 42 

Chartres 22 

Claude de France 64 

Claude Gellee, dit le Lorrain 39 

Clemenceau 74 

Colmar 5, 43 

Cologne 22, 55 



88 INDEX. 

PAGE 

Cormontaigne 21 

Coucy-le-ChS.teau 27 

Custine, Comte de 28 

Denfert-Rochereau, Colonel 45-48, 75 

Divodurum 27 

Dupont des Logcs, Monseigneur 29, 30, 47 

Erckmann-Chatrian 15, 18 

Fabert, Marshal 28 

Fille de Roland, la 77 

Foch, Marshal 11, 29 

France 1-3, 13-15, 19 

French race 21-23, 25, 26, 36, 50 

Franco-Prussian War 1,3, 13, 14, 29, 31, 43, 80 

Frederick Charles, the Red Prince 31 

Gambetta 71, 75 

George of Brandenburg 63 

German race 3, 10, 13, 14, 18, 21, 22, 26, 29, 36, 50 

Germany 1-3, 14, 16, 19, 30 

Gutenberg 1 1 

Harvard College 3 

Henri Deux of France 47, 59, 60, 64 

Holy Roman Empire 62 

Joan of Arc 40, 41, 42 

Keller, Emile, Colonel 71 

Kellermann, Frangois Christophe de, first duke of Valmy 1 1, 28 

Kellermann, Frangois Etienne de, second duke of Valmy 28 

Kleber, General 10, 11, 15 

Koechlin 5 

Konigsmark, Countess Aurora von 12 

La Fayette 20 

Lasalle, General 29 

Lothaire 56, 57 

Louis Douze 63 

Louis the German 56 

Louis Treize 28, 65 

Louis Quatorze 21, 28, 52, 66 

Louis Quinze 21, 38 

Louis Seize 43 



INDEX. 89 

PAGE 

Marseillaise, la 15, 76 

Maria Theresa 37, 38 

Mediomatricii 33~35 

Meistersingers 9 

Metz 17, 20-37, 40. 51. 59~6i 

Messin, pays 22-25, 27, 51 

Moltke 36 

MontMliard 47, 48 

Mulhouse 5, 66 

Nancy 37-41 

Napoleon 4, 10, 11, 28, 31 

Ney , Marshal 31 

Oaths of Strasbourg 56 

Petre 31 

Phalsbourg 18 

Pierrefonds 27 

Pigalle, Jean Baptiste 12 

Reichardt, Gustav 4 

Reims 22, 37, 43 

Rene Deux of Lorraine 19, 41, 69 

Richelieu, Cardinal 15 

Rouget de I'lsle, Captain 76, 77 

Saint- Di^ 19 

Saint-Quentin 37 

Salic law 63 

Saxe, Marshal 12 

Saxony, Mauric3 of 60 

Stanislaus Lesczynski 37, 38 

Strasbourg 6, 8-1 1, 13, 17, 21, 22, 66, 75 

Slrashourgeoise, la 77 

Toul 59, 60 

Uhrich, General 10 

Vauban 21 

Verdun 11, 25, 56, 59-61 

Voltaire. , 62 

Vosges Mountains 5, 9, 17-19, 35, 51, 57, 83 

Waldseemuller, Martin 19, 20 

Westphalia, Peace of 47 

William I of Prussia 25, 31 




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LANGUAGE MAP OF ALSACE AND LORRAINE 
.HE OARK AREA XO XHE LE.X S H O WS ^W H ERE ^R R E NO « ^.^S^ ---■ -E AREA .0 XH. 



IGHT SHOWS 



OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR. 

Some facts about Alsace and Lorraine, 1895. 

The Brooke Family of Whitchurch, Hampshire, England, 
together with an account of Acting-Governor Robert Brooke 
of Maryland and Colonel Ninian Beall of Maryland, 1899. 

The Alabama Arbitration, 1900. 

Emeric Cruce, 1900. 

The Alasko-Canadian Frontier, 1902. 

The Alaska Frontier, 1903. 

The English Ancestors of the Shippens and Edward Shippen 
of Philadelphia, 1904. 

The Swift Family of Philadelphia, 1906. 

Balch Genealogica, 1907. 

L'Evolution de lArbitrage International, 1908. 

La Bale dTIudson est elle une mer libre ou une mer fermee? 
1911. 

La Bale d'Hudson est une grande mer ouverte, 1913. 

Differends juridiques et politiques dans les rapports des 
Nations, 19 14. 

'Arbitration" as a term of International Law, 19 15. 

The Influence of the United States on the Development of the 
Law between Nations, 19 15. 

Legal and Political International Questions and the Recurrence 
of War, 1916. 

The Philadelphia Assemblies, 191 6. 

A World Court in the Light of the United States Supreme 
Court, 1918. 

Translated Le Nouveau Cynee of Emeric Cruce, 1909. 

Republished several times International Courts of Arbitra- 
tion of Thomas Balch. 



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